Common Wisdom Nobody ever got fired for buying

Common Wisdom “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” – Google: 5930 hits “Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft” – Google: 9650 hits

Copyright … • “SCO lawsuit” -Google: 42, 800 hits

Course Management Software

Commercial Vendors • Market leaders – Web. CT – Blackboard – Angel • License costs from $50 k to 6 figures • Outsourcing of core university business

Open Source Course Management Software LON-CAPA = Learning Online Network with Computer-Assisted Personalized Approach

“To repeat what everyone in the Open Source community understands - it's free as in speech, not as in beer. ”

J 5. 001: Resource sharing of online teaching materials: The lon-capa project Wolfgang Bauer Michigan State University LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

LON-CAPA 9 § Learning Content Management System § Assessment System § Open-Source and Free LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

LON-CAPA 10 § Learning Content Management System § Assessment System § Open-Source and Free LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

LON = Learning. Online Network (1) § Providing high quality learning content in an online environment is time and cost intensive § Typical scenario today: § • Online material is developed by only one instructor • Online material is used in only one course • No assessment of learning effectiveness Ineffective use of time and resources LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

LON = Learning. Online Network (2) § Much better scenario: • Online material is developed and reviewed by more than one instructor • Online material is shared among instructors • Online material gets used across many courses and disciplines • Continual assessment of learning effectiveness Multimedia Collaborative Content Creation (mc 3) LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

LON = Learning. Online Network (3) § 13 We have built: • a cross-institutional cross-disciplinary content repository • a tool to seamlessly assemble this content • a course management system to readily deploy this content LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

Network §Network servers of connected §Any server in the network can serve sessions for any user §Content replication in background §Network-wide URL paths 14 persistent LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

Virtual Filesystem “The aisles of your supermarket” Your shopping cart: The Resource Assembly Tool 15 LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

Learning. Online Network This is the physics pool! Other resource pools in biology, chemistry, food science, math, psychology, statistics, … § 3, 000 content pages § 6, 000 homework and exam problems § 5, 000 images § 150 movies § 300 simulations and animations § 150 applets § Publisher libraries, “back of the chapter problems” BUT: Do the students learn any better? 16 LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

LON-CAPA 17 § Learning Content Management System § Assessment System § Open-Source and Free LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

CAPA 18 § Computer-Assisted Personalized Approach § Online assessment with immediate feedback and multiple tries § Different students get different versions of the same problem • different options • different graphs or images • different numbers or formulas LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

CAPA §Same problem, two students 19 LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

CAPA Benefits: • learners can work together without just exchanging the answers • learners get immediate feedback on their learning progress • instructors get immediate feedback on their learners’ progress 20 LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

CAPA Benefits, cont. : • cost-savings in routine grading • instructor time used for instruction, not grading • LON: shared problem library, de-facto setting standards and establishing • LON: cross-course cross-institutional dynamic metadata 21 LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

Across a number of studies: CAPA Improved exam performance Improved course performance Improved performance especially of female students 22 LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

LON-CAPA 23 § Learning Content Management System § Assessment System § Open-Source and Free LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

LON-CAPA §Open-source §No free software license fees §GNU General Public License §Can be modified, extended, improved, adapted. . . §Runs on Linux, no license fees for operating system §Developed 24 by educators for educators LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

Open Source §Code contributions by • Florida • Ohio State University • Simon Fraser University Vancouver • Hebrew University Jerusalem • UNICAMP 25 São Paulo LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

Internationalization §Rewrote most screen output such that it can be localized into other languages 26 LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

Learning. Online Network 27 Writes module on statistical averages Includes the two into her unit on survey analysis Writes module on statistical errors Uses that unit in his course LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

Learning. Online Network §Currently used at 9 high schools, 2 community colleges, and 17 universities nationwide 28 LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

LON-CAPA Installations Multiple: USA, Canada, Brazil, Germany Single: Chile, India, Italy, Zimbabwe

W. Bauer - October 12, 2003

Collaboration LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

Closing Thoughts Initially developed at Michigan State University Funded by Michigan State University and the National Science Foundation under Information Technology Research Project “Investigation of a model for online resource creation and sharing in educational settings” Join us: http: //www. lon-capa. org/ 32 LON-CAPA, W. Bauer, APS Montreal March Meeting

Educational Object Economy W. Bauer - October 12, 2003